* * *
Thomas A. Anderson sighed and sipped his coffee. The only good thing about the dreams, he decided, was that they let him wake up earlier than Smith.
He glanced at the clock. Just a few more minutes until six and his lover woke up. In the year since he had first woken up with Smith in his bed, he had noticed that, no matter what, the man woke up at precisely six in the morning. It might have been slightly creepy, but Smith was a government agent. By definition, he was more than slightly creepy.
He glanced at the clock. 6:01. By now, Smith had noticed he was missing.
Thomas sipped his coffee and waited.
"Another dream?" Smith asked from the doorway.
He nodded.
"What happened?" Smith slid into the chair opposite him with an almost unnatural grace.
He shook his head. It had been the most common of all his dreams. He hadn't woken up screaming this time, and the dark man hadn't cryptically shown him the nature of the universe.
Unbidden, the dream image rose to the forefront of his mind. A woman wearing black mercury clothing sprawled in the middle of an empty street. Her dark eyes stared up at the clear blue sky. Short, dark hair provided a messy frame for her pale face. Soft lips smiled sadly. The only thing marring her face was the bullet-hole between her eyes.
"The dead woman again?"
"I wish I knew who she was," Thomas murmured.
* * *
Agent Brown considered pushing Agent Smith off of a tall building. "The only reason we have this problem is because you chose to re-insert Neo into the Matrix."
Agent Smith glanced at him, before returning his attention to the window. "He upheld his end of the agreement; we are the ones who failed to keep ours."
"Compensation was required," Agent Jones rumbled from near the door.
"Compensation was required," Agent Brown agreed. "Merely suppressing his memories was not. These 'dreams' of his suggest that the blocks are breaking down. What will we do if he remembers who he was?"
"Kill him," Agent Jones offered.
Agent Smith remained silent.
* * *
Thomas looked up from his computer when Smith entered the room. "How was your day?"
Smith growled at him.
He blinked. "That bad?"
Smith stalked over and snatched his sunglasses off. "I will not allow them to take you away."
He blinked again. "Wha-"
Punishing lips silenced him and cool hands tore at his clothes. He relaxed and responded with equal fervor. This was something he knew how to handle.
Later, he lay on the bed with Smith's face buried in his neck and thought about the Question. When had he met Smith?
One night in 1999, he went to bed in his ratty apartment. Then, his memory just stopped until 2003 when he woke up in a nice bed with Smith draping an arm over him. He had lost four years of his life somewhere.
Smith knew what had happened during those four years he was sure, but whenever he tried to ask, Smith distracted him. Admittedly, the method he used was a very good one when it came to distractions and Thomas wasn't going to be complaining anytime soon.
Obviously, he had met Smith sometime during that missing period. However, the man was even less talkative about that time than he was about anything else.
Thomas sighed and let sleep overtake him.
* * *
"Neo! What have you done?!" Hemera sounded hysterical, he noted. It was getting rather annoying the way she couldn't seem to handle anything when people died.
He turned and shot her. Her yelling stopped as abrubtly as her heart.
Neo holstered his gun and knelt down next to Morpheus's body. "I'm sorry, Morpheus, but not every choice is the best one. I have to think of Trinity and the baby."
He shut the man's eyes gently.
* * *
Strong arms held him close to a warm body as he screamed. He cowered in those arms, knowing that he had done something terrible and it was all for nothing.
"Shh.... It was just a dream...." Warm hands ran up and down his spine soothingly. "It was just a dream, Thomas."
The End
A/N: Though Narsus and I sometimes borrow ideas and characters from each other, this is not the Thomas from Narsus's "The Same." This is Thomas A. Anderson a.k.a. Neo.